


Examinations

by mresundance



Series: Alexander - Sex Ed [3]
Category: Alexander (2004)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-06
Updated: 2010-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-11 13:22:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mresundance/pseuds/mresundance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Heph, who cannot handle the kissy kissy touchy feely crap, avoids Alex until he can't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Examinations

"Don't wiggle too much. I'll be up there to help you," Alex said to Kassander, strung up the school date palm by his toga for the 3rd time that week. Kassander looked like he might cry except he was probably too frightened to be so high off the ground.

Alex sighed and scaled the slippery palm trunk. While up in the branches trying to untangle the writhing and hyperventilating Kassander, he caught a glimpse of Hephaestion, outside the school grounds, parading around in his new Persian chariot with a load of men. Including Karlos Starvos, a shady creature who imported Mycenaean porn vases.

 

Alex grimaced and failed to notice Kassander slipping and falling to the ground to be laughed at by his peers.

"Hey bitches," Aristotle sauntered in with an armload of papyrus rolls and his morning mug of undiluted wine. "Get your asses in your stools so we can get this day over with. Now! Scram!" He craned his neck back and squinted at Alex.

"That means you too. What? You think you're some kind of fucking bird? Hermes or Zeus up there? Get your ass down from that tree!"

In class, Aristotle began by mentioning Anacreon's misogynistic lyric crap wouldn't be taught in this class, and bitches, shut the Hades up because he was teaching Sappho, and he didn't care what complaints they had because they were the next best things to barbarians anyways, so everyone except maybe their baby sisters were over them in the pecking order. Meanwhile Alex sat and stared at Heph's empty seat as if that would magically make him materialize. Heph had missed school for the last couple months or so, cutting class to march around with his admirers. He hadn't been back to their dorm room either, not since the lovely, horrible, stupid day in detention, Alex thought bitterly. Shouldn't have done it, he thought for the 50 millionth time, but then, it had been so easy, so natural, so tempting at the time. Sucking Heph off. Er. Thinking about it – much less thinking about it in such blunt terms – both new to Alex – made him turn pinkish upon his stool.

And it's not as if he had just sat back and done nothing but pine in those months. No; his initial sexual encounter had piqued some dormant curiosity in Alex, and he began to eye the crotches and asses of his peers thoughtfully. He had snogged a few other boys and fiddled around with a few others, found it interesting, certainly, especially how everyone was just a little different – lips, tastes, how they moved or kissed, the feel of them – but still. Not Hephaestion. That lanky, graceful boy who could always best him at wrestling, whose eyes flickered like moonlight on water, and a cunning smile that had always made Alex a little tipsy.

While Heph had spent his sweet 16th birthday nancing around with the Persian chariot he had gotten, Alex had spent his 15th birthday stuck with his parents and the lamest ass birthday cake since the days when it was all just Chaos.

"I labored and poured my sweat into this cake of cake's my son," his mother had said. "It is the cake of cakes for the son of son's, who will shine like the wonderful sun and the golden lion. You see? I even put a lion and a sun on your cake. Is his mane of shaved coconut not the finest and are his eyes of candied figs not lovely?"

You are on fucking mushrooms, Alexander had thought, a thought that wouldn't have occurred to him a few months ago, but he had been wearied and impatient with his parents – who were supposed to be the adults – always quibbling and throwing fits like toddling children did. He had looked at his cake that he might have liked when he was 9 or 10, but 15? Too embarrassing.

And his parents, who had forgotten what days they would originally come to celebrate his birthday as to arrive on different days and avoid each other, had come on the same day and spent most of it shouting at each other. His mother had yowled loudly about how a certain boy's uncle had gotten his _nephew_ a Persian chariot for his birthday, and why hadn't her son, who was the son of son's and destined for greatness and to be king, gotten a measly little chariot from his own father?

"Is my son not good enough to be your son? Is he not good enough for you now? You foul wretch! I hate your black guts! I hate you!" she had screamed. After an afternoon of squalling at each other, Alex had ignored them having sex in a broom closet near his room, while still bickering.

"You can't even do simple doggy style right, you moron! And you call yourself the king of this stupid little country! You dare to call – ah! – yourself the king!"

Alex's father had gotten him a Starvos deluxe porn vase that displayed 5 different positions along the side.

Plus, midyear exams coming up. Alex's stomach twitched and not for the last time he wished he was unethical enough to go crawling to his father and beg him to threaten Aristotle with beheading if he didn't automatically pass Alex and let him leave early. He wanted nothing more than to end up on the beach in Crete, drinking a little wine and idling away his time with some fit, fine thing . . . not like Heph, in his mind, blue eyes and all. Oh fuck it.

While Alex wasn't thinking about missing Heph, said object of affection was getting an olive oil bath from Cleitus and Starvos. Well. If an olive oil bath counted as being slathered in oil while Starvos administered oral to Heph and Cleitus watched and wanked.

Hephaestion let a little moan go, if only for show and to encourage the old fogey between his legs (he was nearly 29! Zeus' _beard_) to keep doing that thing with his tongue again. Cleitus leans in and tries to kiss Heph and Heph shoves him off with an annoyed look. Cleitus instead starts lapping at Hephaestion's nipples. None of that kissy kissy touchy feely crap, he thinks as Cleitus licks and nips his way down to his hips. Cleitus nudging Starvos and then tilting Hephaestion's hips so that he lay on his side. What was – oh – Starvos's ruddy lips back on Hephaestion's cock as Cleitus dipped his tongue into Hephaestion's ass. Now that elicited a real moan from him and his back arched in pleasure.

He almost wished Alexander there, between his thighs, like that not-so distant memory of him kneeling on the floor of their schoolroom and taking Hephaestion into his mouth. It had been sweet, gentling, his hands on Hephaestion's thighs and the way he clearly hadn't been in the habit of putting cocks in his mouth much before. And clumsy as all Hades, none of the savvy that older blokes like Starvos or Cleitus had, but that had been endearing in a sloppy, soppy way. A jab of heat speared Hephaestion and his muscles stiffened as he came. He laid in the other men's limbs and kept wishing dimly for Alex, his warm presence which had always comforted him like a warm cloak and wine in winter. Hephaestion shuddered, closing his eyes against the press of bodies, too close with their big hairy, sweaty man-stink, and the edge of his own his wanting. He wanted, oh yes, but at the same time, Alex's tenderness, his loyalty – bewildering. Like when he was little, little and his father had gone after a servant girl when they were supposed to be only passing through a local market (men don't shop, at least not the Greek ones) and left Hephaestion standing in the middle of the din, a smash of human bodies and wagons and people shouting about their wares, lost and small and feeling like the entire world could just roll over and crush him.

See also: the time his father had gone after their family's servant girl and Heph had ended up in the family well.

See also: the broken arm when he was 8 because he scaled a tree while his father was with a servant girl in a nearby cluster of bushes.

See also: his mother sighing and passing him off to a servant girl anytime he came to her feeling sick or afraid. A thin thing that had spent the last 18 years of her life locked away in her husband's house since their marriage. Her virginity was something of an echo of a memory and she had lived far past her usefulness since bearing Hephaestion, especially with all the little sisters Hephaestion now had. It wasn't her fault, he knew, but she spent most of her time anymore sighing and rolled in blankets looking wane, sometimes going out to the amphitheatre during the day to keep up with her soap dramas. While her husband, down the hall, mucked around with a servant girl. Hephaestion sometimes briefly wondered how many of the servants kids were actually his half siblings, but it was too depressing a thought for him to mull over long.

Alex always bitched about his parents and Heph always felt a little serpent of jealousy, because at least Alex's parents gave enough of a rat's ass to _argue_ over him.

Cleitus was attempting the kissing thing again and Heph rolled his eyes and wriggled away so that his lips landed on his shoulder. And then he thought – a sudden thought that rolled out from under the metaphoric cot of his brain like a dusty, forgotten sandal or ball – fuck. Exams.

*  


  
"Hey."

Alex blinked around the sheaf of papyrus at Hephaestion, who was actually standing in the doorway of their dorm room. The grey linen curtain that served as a sort of half-assed door ("all the better to know what you monkeys are up to" Aristotle would say when he walked rounds at night) falling partially over Hephaestion's shoulder, golden light from Alexander's oil lamp washing across his face and the other shoulder, like he was two, wavering between shadow and light. His blue eyes were murky, and he kept worrying his lower lip in a way that was getting Alex all too aroused all too quickly.

"Hey," said Alexander, trying to sound bored and put away the papyrus, upon which just happened to be some very very _fine_ Egyptian porn. It had been part of a belated birthday gift from Aristotle. Sort of. Kind of. Alex wasn't sure and he felt too embarrassed and too interested in the porn to go running to his favouritest teacher and ask him if he stuck the porn in intentionally. Aristotle had yanked him aside last week, the day before the reading week commenced, and given Alex a copy of _The Iliad_.

"That's for your birthday. I know it's late, but pretend I didn't get you anything anyways because I can't show favoritism," Aristotle's bushy brows had twitched. "So your voice and your balls are dropping," he had said and Alex had blushed. His voice had started to do that embarrassing cracking thing that Hephaestion's had done a year and a half earlier. Alex used to laugh his ass off at Hephaestion's voice going from a squeal to a bear roar in less than 5 seconds, but didn't find it so funny when he was trying to recite _The Iliad_ for class and his voice kept wavering while his peers cackled and Aristotle kept saying "shut it bitches!"

Aristotle went on as if he had just made a comment about the weather. "Someday you're going to probably be king of this backwardsass country and then maybe 90% of the world or something, but fuck knows, maybe you'll just be some half-assed councilman plotting to kill one of your half brothers who became king instead of you. Or maybe become a goatherder and have a fat wife and happy babies, though, somehow, I think . . ." he had paused significantly. He had leaned forward, peering down at Alex, who had hiccoughed from nervousness.

"Whatever kid. You do or you don't. Maybe is a stupid way to live your life. In anything you do. You do or you don't. Just think about that. Now get before I get gushy and sentimental son."

Alex had gone out with his brow furrowed and wondering what the Hades that was all about. That night, after studying and figuring out that he didn't need to study because he knew everything already for the exams, he turned his attentions to reading _The Iliad_ and had discovered the porn which had been keeping him company for the last week.

Hephaestion looked at Alexander laying on his bed trying to hide the porn (so last year's edition of PlayPharaoh, but the fact that Alex, innocent golden boy goody goody Alex who never picked on the elderly or women or Kassander and always left his teacher a pomegranate Alex was looking at it is what interested Hephaestion). He really was cute – maybe growing handsome in an awkward sort of way – stringy with his too big hands and feet, the bristly baby floss speckling his chin and cheeks, dressed in a filmy linen undergarment that left just the right amount to the imagination – and sort of naïve, stuffing the papyrus behind his back like Hephaestion wouldn't notice. Heph wondered if Alex had noticed how Heph's books had been disappearing in the past week – as he'd sneak in to take his books away to study – when he knew Alex wouldn't be there. It was a coward's move, he knew, but had done it anyways until he decided it was stupid. So like those cheesy soap dramas his mom might go to the ampitheatre to cry over some bronze skinned guy with fake hair pasted on his chest and his fuck-ups with his priestess girlfriend or whatever was going on that week. But that was the point. Things just went on and on and getting more and more fucked up and never being resolved. If the characters were people, Hephaestion who had thought several times that he had given this too much thought, thought, it would be really wearying, like the last months without Alexander.

"What are you doing here?" they both flinched at Alex's question, but it was fair enough.

Heph shrugged. "Oh, you know. I need to study and it's not like. I'll get that done. In Starvos' er . . . grotto . . ."

Alex faintly blushed and tried not to think of Heph in all kinds of kinky and compromising situations that would turn him on. They both looked at the vase his father had given him at the same time – Alex from anxious habit and Heph for the first time, with surprise. Alex threw a cloth over it and coughed loudly. Heph trundled to his bed, left like it had been a few months gone and sat down, uneasily. He had a rucksack of his books with him that he dumped on the floor. Without looking at Alex he pulled a few books out and started to study. Pretended to study, Alex noticed out of the corner of his eye. He was pretending to find the ceiling interesting and not start wanking then and there. Because, Zeus, he could _smell_ Hephaestion from this distance: olive oil and fine linen and teenage boy sweat and a hint of clean, sharp lemon. He could even feel the heat of his body wafting off him. Dammit. So much better than finding Heph's books gone and just scenting the echo of his presence over the last week, knowing maddeningly that he _had been there_, wanting to slug him and snog him, wrestling with both emotions and then his guilt and confusion for feeling both at the same time before finally laying down and surrendering.

Heph cleared his throat and Alex jumped like he had prodded him with a toga pin. Heph grinned weakly, not knowing what to do now that he was here. Did he apologize? Did he start stripteasing and singing a bawdy song? Did he ignore Alex and wait for him to clobber him and ravage him on the floor? He worried his lip and stared at a page in his book.

The lip worrying. _Gagh._ Alex couldn't take it anymore and invited himself over to Hephaestion's bed. Fuck you, guilt and indecision, he thought, mentally playing dirty and kneeing them both in the balls.

"Oh, hey, Alex," Heph was suddenly, oddly, timid and Alex relished this. This wasn't like Alex, Heph was sure as Alex reached out and tucked a stray strand of Heph's dark hair behind his ear. As Alex leaned in, Heph decided to bluff.

"Hey Alex, what is the point of – er –" he picked out a random word from his book. "Semen . . . uhm . . ." wrong word to pick, but. "Erher. Sperm. Is for?" his voice wibbled. Why did he have to pretend to be studying anatomy?

Alex crooked his brow at Hephaestion in a positively lecherous way that made Hephaestion's cock go from 0 to a 90 degree angle in a matter of seconds. Oh Euclidian beauty, Alex noticed and pursed his lips and hummed.

"Dude. Sperm is a source of knowledge," he purred in his ear. "When guys fuck, they pass knowledge. Duh. Weren't you paying attention in sex ed at the beginning of the year?"

Hephaestion, rude boy, pretty boy who fawned like a peacock feathered by his admirers, boy who had sucked off half the other boys on the playground already, turned a rosy hue from nose to eartips. Alex's hand was warm on his thigh and started to work its way upwards.

"But . . . isn't that with the younger man older man thingie? The erastes gives the eromenos – knowledge*," Heph babbled.

"You're older than me," Alex puffed air against his throat, worrying circles into Heph's thigh with his fingertips. "Surely you have knowledge to impart to me . . ."

Great. Alex was dirty talking. How long had Heph been gone? What had happened to the stupidly innocent Alex he could buffalo with bravado? When had he been replaced by this young and up-and-coming sexy thing who could do naïve and dirty? And why was he quaking like a 13 year old virgin on her wedding night?

"I'm stupid," Heph said miserably, not knowing what else to say when Alex started sucking tenderly at his earlobe. "I'm stupid Alex and I wasn't fair to you. I didn't know what to do, okay? I like you a lot. How's that for knowledge? And why in blessed Aphrodite's name are you sucking my earlobe? Earlobes taste waxy and gross."

"Because it's your earlobe. Duh."

"Oh. Okay."

That was reason enough, Hephaestion supposed, and felt a tremendous wash of gratefulness and relief and a strange, strange feeling that was warm and gentling. Alex leaned in, and, pushing Heph's book to the floor (oooh, macho, Heph thought), guided Heph onto his back in the center of his bed and kissed his nose-tip.

"You are fucking weird," Heph said. "Aren't you even a little pissed off at me?"

"Yeah," said Alex, cupping Heph's shoulders. He was ignoring Heph's anxious looks and instead thinking, he's here, he's here, he's here, like the drumming of his heart. And he wanted to it be this way always. His anger left as soon as Hephaestion showed up, really. Stupid myths about gods and their grudges be damned too, because forgiveness was sweet. Forgiveness was Hephaestion's pink lips a hair's breadth from his own forgiveness was kissing him and feeling Hephaestion press back, timidly, then grabbing Alex's face and pursuing his lips with his tongue.

It was Hephaestion's first kiss, and he would admit as much, years later, on the borders of India, when Alex would be wild eyed and raving. His wife wouldn't know how to console him and would call Hephaestion.

"Heph," he would say with sunken, sad eyes in his pallid face. "I suck. I lose at life. I am a tremendous fuck-up. I can't do anything right. My men hate me. My wife thinks I'm a loser. I think. I don't know what to do. I wanted to conquer India, right? But it's fucking huge and half my army wants to riot because people are dying off from weird snakebites and diseases and shit and everyone wants to go home. I don't want to go home. I think. I don't know. Plus, I can't find a decent barber to get rid of my shitty dye job and haircut that I've had since like, Babylon. Everything is fucked up . . ."

Heph, older and calmer and tamed by his years of war, diplomacy, and love with Alex, would wait and listen until the blustering stops and then hold him and say, ah, but when were young . . .

"I don't remember being young," Alex would say. And Heph would kiss his nose-tip. And Alex's eyes would widen and he'd smile through a few unwilling tears.

But young Alex and Hephaestion rolled around in each other's arms kissing, hands romping over each other's bodies, palms smoothing against young muscle, reveling in the feeling and the taste of each other. Hephaestion felt new to all this again and his heart reared like the Thracian fillies poets always dribbled on about. Alex felt how both of their cocks were swelling, and fast, pouring off heat through their thin chitons. Alex shifted and arched into Hephaestion, bumping their cocks together and Heph arched back, whimpering. Nibbling along Hephaestion's jaw, Alex kissed his throat, his collarbone, hesitated at the hem of his chiton. Heph glared at him, get on with it. Alex giggled, he's going to tease this one out, _Heph at least deserved that for all his bad, bad behavior_, Alex murmured as he pulled the top layers of Heph's garbs off, stripping him down to his linen undergarment. _Prick_, Heph managed as Alex swooped down and sucked a nipple through the undergarment. Heph yelped, Alex's hands – firm hands – pressing down on his hips - pushing him under Alex and the blood was all flushing to his face as Alex worked his way down, kissing and licking through the undergarment. Heph bucked as Alex pressed his lips, breathy, to the tip of Hephaestion's crying cock, crying like the frustrated sounds Heph kept making as Alex teased him with flicks of his tongue through the linen. The linen became soaked with sweat, and precum, and spit, sticking to Hephaestion's cock. Then sucking Hephaestion through the cloth and Hephaestion growling at the sensation of Alexander's wet, warm mouth and the linen slightly rough against his silk skin.

"Oh Hades and Zeus' lighteningbolts you fucker," Hephaestion gasped. Alex laughed and kissed Hephaestion again. Heph moaned into the kiss, reaching with frantic hands to tug their linen undergarments away and grab Alex's cock. He hadn't done that before in all their mucking around, and he startled at how – and how – admirably thick it was. Alex purred and stretched against him as Heph stroked him, doing that little flick of his wrist that had driven many a man mad before. But with Alex, every little fiber of his skin and hair lit up.

"Hephaestion," he breathed into his throat, caressing his shoulder and jaw, reaching under his undergarment to run his palm over his chest and the silky fine hairs there. With his other hand he grabbed Hephaestion's ass. He kneaded his ass clumsily, what would be bruises dug by blunt fingers and nails, but Heph was far beyond caring and thought, oh, what the Hades before pulling his knees back and guiding Alex's cock towards him. Alex hesitated.

"That's like –"

"I know, I know, the Unmentionable Thing** that you should never do, oooh oooh, just fuck me Alex because guys do it anyways, they just don't talk about it. Your dad even fucked my dad once, I'm told."

"I totally didn't need to know that right now," Alex said doubtfully. "Besides, I don't want to – you know –" he shrugged. "Like. I want to but. I dunno. I mean."

"Just do me goldie," Heph smirked. Alex laughed and cuffed him, lovingly, and, inch by inch, with Hephaestion's guidance and trying not to burst from just the first tickle of his cock against Hephaestion, Alexander made his way into the taut embrace of Hephaestion's body.

"This is weird," they both said and laughed again, making a jerky rhythm. Heph wasn't sure if he was supposed to like this, feeling all stretched and a little sore, but Alex made it good enough, with those bright wide eyes and golden hair glowing around him like a halo. Alex wondered too, but it was enough they were both panting like riled puppies, excited by the nearness of each other, by fingers curled around hips and shoulders and lips against collarbones and chins and sweat, the smells and tastes of each other, excited enough that they both came, Heph first and then Alex.

Slumped over Hephaestion, peering at him out of the corner of his eyes, Alex almost cried. Hephaestion, dazedly looked sideways at Alex and swallowed back his own tears. They lay for a few minutes before Heph wriggled.

"Alex, move, you're making my leg go numb."

"Sorry," he shifted and lay alongside Heph, putting an arm around his waist. Heph stiffened, thinking this possibly weirder than the Unmentionable Thing, maybe. But then. It was Alex.

"You okay?" Alex asked quietly, so quietly, afraid that he'd startled Heph, like a small wild animal, away; he'd be left alone again.

"Yeah," Heph sighed. A very small, happy noise as his tensed body uncoiled into Alex's. Alex pulled him closer, pressing lips into his shoulder.

\---------------------------------  
* I got that off wikipedia somewhere.

** Apparently a Greek guy letting another guy penetrate him was equated with "being like a woman" (ie, a passive sexual partner), which would have been thought degrading to both partners.


End file.
